On June 11, 2025, the SDG Local Action series launched the guidelines “Strengthening local food production by improving market access: a case study on the city of Butuan, Philippines”. The webinar, moderated by the FAO Green Cities initiative, featured the participation of officials from the city of Butuan, who outlined their long-term urban development roadmap and AgriBoost, an award-winning project that is reshaping the local food production and value chain.
The video recording of the event is available on our YouTube channel – in English, Spanish, and French.
Download the guidelines about AgriBoost here.
Access to the data visualization about AgriBoost here.
Butuan’s development vision
This first presentation zoomed in to the “big picture” on the city´s vision: where Butuan is and what it wants to become, including:
- Strategic position and natural assets: sitting in the fertile Agusan Valley, Butuan benefits from rich soils, year-round rainfall, a protective mountain range and the Butuan Bay.
- City vision: branded “Lagsik nga Dakbayan – Butuan On, a City Ascending,” the municipality seeks to become:
- a smart agri-eco city,
- an agro-industrial processing centre,
- an innovation & technology nucleus, and
- a trading and logistics hub.
- Six development imperatives:
- Accelerate infrastructure for roads, bridges, irrigation and drainage.
- Build efficient logistics and utility systems.
- Adopt responsive policies for optimal resource use.
- Enhance revenue generation to broaden social services.
- Deploy smart, innovative technologies.
- Improve market access and overall investment climate.
- Spatial and flagship programmes:
- A multi-nodal strategy adds Special Economic Development Zones (SEDZs) and new town centres, coupled with: the AgriBoost Farm School (soil/water management & greenhouse tech), a Regional Agro-Industrial Business Center, and development of the Butuan Logistics Seaport. AgriBoost is positioned as the foundational initiative that underpins the economic viability of these large-scale projects.
AgriBoost: closing the food-system gap
The second presentation drilled down into the city’s flagship innovation, detailing why AgriBoost was created, how it works, and what it has achieved so far.
Challenges
The city of Butuan faced common challenges that many intermediate cities in Southeast Asia encounter: insufficient local production, weak farmer-buyer linkages, inefficient logistics, and dependency on volatile external markets.
- Local vegetable self-sufficiency was just 18.72 %.
- Only 400 of 12,000 farmers grew vegetables.
- Retail prices were 24 – 77 % higher than in neighbouring cities.
Solution
In response, the local government launched AgriBOOST, an integrated and digitally supported platform that restructures how food is produced, distributed, and consumed. For this project, city leaders chose not to fix a single link but to stitch production, logistics, marketing, and consumption together around one digital “spine”: an enterprise resource planning (ERP), backed by physical infrastructure.
Key components of this project include:
- AgriBloom: real-time, demand-driven crop plans reach farmers and show what peers are planting.
- AgriHub: harvests are graded, cooled and matched to predictive demand curves.
- AgriMart: supermarkets, restaurants and vendors place dated orders; customers buy at last-mile outlets.
- AgriBoost Comms: nutrition campaigns and constant outreach keep farmers, traders and consumers talking.
Main results
- Vegetable output leapt 88 % (207 t to 389 t) and self-sufficiency climbed to roughly 38 %.
- Average monthly sales per participating grower rose 34 % (PHP 8,829 → 11,871).
- Consumers now pay about PHP 5.9 /kg less than at the central Tabuan market.
- Behaviour change is visible: one farmer expanded from 0.5 ha to 3 ha; another bought a mini-truck to move bigger volumes.
- AgriBOOST approach repositions food not just as a commodity, but as a public good tied to equity, climate resilience, and inclusive development.
Lessons learned
- Craft a shared vision that places every actor “on the same page” and clarifies which flagship projects matter most.
- Back the vision with visible leadership—a hands-on mayor and empowered team keep momentum alive.
- Invest early in capacity building, especially digital and agronomic skills, so technology upgrades actually stick.
- Let data drive decisions; build simple dashboards that farmers, traders and officials all trust.
- Communicate relentlessly; transparent dialogue builds trust and enlarges the community of practice.
- Frame change around competitiveness; better quality and on-time delivery translate into higher, steadier incomes.
- Learn while doing; iterate, document and re-programme instead of waiting for end-line evaluations.
- Find mentors and extension officers who can coach farmers through new tools and cropping patterns.
- Start small, prove value, scale smart; incremental wins de-risk investment and steady expectations.
- Keep governance collaborative; distribute clear roles and let every stakeholder “own” a piece of the process.
Conclusion
By integrating market intelligence directly into farm decisions, Butuan has doubled local production, increased farmer incomes, and reduced consumer prices in less than three crop cycles. The AgriBoost experience demonstrates how even mid-sized cities can achieve a full value-chain transformation and, in doing so, establish a foundation for larger agro-industrial and logistics investments in the coming years.